Dmitry Muratov: "We have always had problems with authorities, but the pressure which we face today is probably the strongest. We started to face it at the end of the previous year, when more than 130 officials of the Central Bank, together with law enforcement and FSB (Federal Security Service), came to the office of Alexander Lebedev's bank."
Russia’s best known investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta, an OCCRP partner, says its primary owner has been under increased pressure as the March presidential election nears. Novaya Gazeta’s vocal criticism of the Kremlin makes it no stranger to pressure.
On 19 December last year, addressing a meeting at the Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydroelectric Power Station devoted to development of the power industry, you said: “If we want to have a normal investment climate in the country, we should make it impossible to implement offshore schemes. We cannot tolerate diversion of financial resources from sectors of the economy through front firms.
Alexander Lebedev – the billionaire owner of Russia’s Novaya Gazeta and Britain’s The Independent – is leaving business for politics because he has grown tired of battling corrupt officials.
Alexander Lebedev, the owner of The Independent, has written to the head of Russia's security service offering his experience from 11 years of service with the organisation to help to expose corruption in business and the country's "power structures".
Russian police have questioned Alexander Lebedev, the former KGB agent, tycoon and newspaper owner, for more than three hours as part of a probe into alleged embezzlement at a bank that his business empire once controlled.
On 18 February the Natsionalnyy Rezervnyy Bank [National Reserve Bank] (NRB), which belongs to Aleksandr Lebedev, a Novaya Gazeta stockholder, may be closed. The formal pretext is an administrative case started by firemen who decided that the office of the NRB, located in one of the best business centres in Russia, does not meet safety requirements.

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